


car troubles

by sleeplessmiles



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 06:08:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5237261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleeplessmiles/pseuds/sleeplessmiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance Hunter is in a bit of an accident. Luckily, Jemma's there to help.</p>
<p>(Set in Season 2)</p>
            </blockquote>





	car troubles

**Author's Note:**

> So I actually wrote and posted this around six months ago for a jemmalance tumblr prompt I got, 'Fuck I feel like I got hit by a car… Wait I did? And it was your car?' and I only just remembered it earlier. Thought it might be worth a cross-post. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!!

 

The first thing Lance registers upon waking is  _pain_. It’s not the most pain he’s ever been in – not by a long shot – and it’s actually kind of curiously dulled, like the edge has been taken off somehow, but it’s still a lot more pain than he usually feels when he wakes up. Never a good sign.

Slowly cracking his eyelids open against the pounding in his head, he braces himself against the sudden light and takes stock of his surroundings. It looks a lot like he’s in a standard sort of hospital room, which is something of a relief; waking to a soft mattress beneath his body and medical supplies in plain sight is a vast improvement on floor tiles and toilets.

He’s in the lab at the Playground, here. He’s almost certain of it.

Good. That’s good.

Tilting his head a little to the left, he can make out a small figure fussing about the storage shelves, grabbing packs of… supplies? Or something. Too much effort to work out what she’s doing. But he’d recognise the meticulously curled hair, the tension across her shoulders (still visible even through the lab coat), from anywhere by this point.

It can’t be too bad if Jemma’s looking after him.

‘Ugh,’ he groans, half to get her attention and half because it  _hurts_ , damn it. She whirls around to face him so rapidly that it makes his head spin, and he barely has time to take in her wide eyes and alarmed expression before it’s morphing into one of unabashed relief.

‘Oh good, you’re awake,’ she says. There isn’t even the slightest hint of her normal good-natured teasing in the statement, which is worrying. She looks almost… nervous?

God.

That doesn’t bode well.

He must have been pretty badly injured to make her look like that. How long was he out?

Before he can ask aloud, though, she starts poking at a cut on his arm – to clean it up, maybe. Probably. His mind’s still a little too scattered to focus on it directly and find out.

‘Sit still,’ she instructs.

‘Ugh,’ he repeats, struggling into a more upright position despite her protestations. The action immediately pulls at his side and he cries out, clutching at his ribs and falling back to the bed.

When he looks up again, Jemma’s eyebrows are raised, a dubious expression painted across her features.

‘I told you to sit still.’

Oh, there it is. There’s a touch of know-it-all smugness in that response, in the way she presses her lips together briefly. That’s the Jemma he knows. So it can’t have been that bad, right?

(The sharp stabbing pain between his ribs seems to suggest otherwise.)

‘God, I feel like utter shit,’ he croaks out. ‘What the hell happened?’

Jemma purses her lips before answering, quickly averting her eyes. ‘You were in an accident.’

Huh. He frowns, mentally reaching for some recollection of it but coming up with nothing.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, _really_ , it was an accident!’ she snaps at him, suddenly harsh. Lance feels his eyebrows shoot right up.

‘Alright… wasn’t  _actually_  questioning whether or not it was an accident…’

‘Oh. Right,’ she states, and it’s almost as though she’s talking to herself. She shakes her head a little. ‘Right.’

Lance flops his head back onto the pillow, regarding her more critically. Is it – could she have been in the accident too?

‘Sure  _you’re_  not the one who’s been in an accident?’ he ventures.

Jemma freezes, shooting a worried look at him. ‘What?’

‘You’re all…’ he trails off, searching for the right word to describe her weird, kind of erratic behaviour. ‘Jumpy.’

Relaxing somewhat and giving a breathless little laugh, she turns away from him to grab for some gauze. ‘You suffered a bit of a bump to the head, Lance. I’m sure it’s just the injury talking.’

Head injury. That would explain the pounding behind his temples, then. Stifling a groan, he rubs his hands across his face.

‘What  _did_ happen, by the way? I feel like I’ve been hit by a car.’

Across from him, Jemma’s hands still over the instruments. Just for a second, granted, but it’s enough.

_No._

The memories hit him all at once: he and Jemma out on a standard supply run, getting jumped by a small Hydra unit, Jemma running to bring the car around… Lance turning around to see their SUV reversing rapidly at him…

He sits bolt upright, ignoring the stabbing pain that shoots through him at the motion.

Jemma’s eyes widen in alarm.

Lance points at her accusingly.

‘No, wait,’ she begins.

‘You!’

‘It’s not – ’

‘You hit me with a fucking car!’

She takes a step closer to him, trying to push his arm back down. ‘No, you just – ’

‘You did! You drove a bloody SUV at me!’

‘Will you be quiet?’ she asks – all too calmly, in his opinion. He opens and closes his mouth a few times in disbelief, spluttering a bit.

‘Why on earth would I be quiet?’

‘Because if anybody finds out then they won’t let me drive again!’ she hisses, stepping closer still. Her eyes are still comically wide, and holy shit, she’s serious. She’s actually serious.

‘Jemma!’ he whines.

‘What?’

‘ _I_ don’t want you to drive again, because  _you hit me with your bloody car!_ ’

‘It was only a little bit,’ she mutters, before freezing and shooting him a guilty look. He can only gape.

‘Just a little bit! Great, I got just a little bit run over. Fantastic.’

Jemma scoffs, grabbing for a stack of papers. ‘Oh, stop carrying on, you’re fine.’

‘I’m – how can you say that?’

‘Because I’m your doctor, and I made sure of it, alright?’ Her voice is so stern that his next retort dies on his tongue. She nods, just the once. ‘Now. It’s a regrettable situation – ’

‘  _– regrettable?!_ ’

‘ – but really, it could have been a lot worse, and I think everybody involved conducted themselves admirably, to be perfectly honest.’ She finishes with a bright smile, and he just… he doesn’t even know where to start.

‘How could I conduct myself admirably when I was unconscious?’

She rolls her eyes at him. ‘I protected your dignity, Lance. Don’t worry.’

‘My – God, you’re unbelievable, you know that? Unbelievable.’

‘I’ve been informed as much, yes,’ she says with a pleased smile to herself, eyes scanning the file in front of her.

Lance sighs, because what else can he do at this point? She’s clearly beyond whatever the rest of them call reason. He watches her go about her business for a couple of moments, resting back against the pillows in stunned silence, before he realises that the room behind her isn’t doing a very good job of staying in the one spot.

‘Are you sure I’m okay? My head’s spinning.’

‘Oh, yes. I expect that’ll be the drugs in your system,’ she replies neatly, pen scratching away at the clipboard.

He blinks.

‘Come again?’

‘I had to drug you.’ At his continued silence, she looks up to see him staring and just scoffs. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that! You were in pain, I was trying to help.’

‘I feel like we should be revisiting why I was in pain, exactly. Namely:  _you ran me over_.’

Jemma’s whole demeanour shifts at that, gaze dropping and shoulders sagging, and he immediately regrets whatever part he played in making her look like that.

‘When you’re being shot at, reverse looks an awful lot like drive,’ she says quietly.

She flexes her hand subconsciously as she walks back across to the shelves, drawing Lance’s gaze, and – oh. Her knuckles are slightly swollen, blue and purple bruising blossoming outwards, and there are several cuts and splits on her usually clear hands.

Shit. She would have had to drag him back into the car under heavy gunfire. What else did she have to do?

_Shit._

‘Jemma?’ She turns back around, regarding him a little warily. He sighs. ‘Thanks. For, you know. Not leaving me there to die.’

‘Of course.’ The corners of her mouth quirk up into a wry grin. ‘There’d have been too much paperwork otherwise, right?’

Despite everything, he finds himself smiling back softly. ‘Right.’

Nodding once, satisfied, Jemma turns to dispose of the various empty packages that had been littered across the little bedside table before heading for the door. At the last minute, however, she seems to remember something, stopping in her tracks and turning back to look at him.

‘Oh, one last thing – if anybody asks, you were hit by a Hydra vehicle. I then managed to subdue our attackers and get you back into our SUV and off to safety.’ She raises her eyebrows proudly. ‘It was all very heroic.’

‘Mmm, I’m sure it was,’ he grumbles back at her, and his tone is sarcastic but he’s not entirely joking. It sounds like quite a feat, to be honest. Still. ‘What if I just told them the truth instead?’

Jemma only smiles sweetly at him from the doorway, tilting her head in a way she knows will infuriate him.

‘Lance. Absolutely nobody would believe you.’

He watches her leave the room, all too pleased with herself, before flopping his head back onto the pillows and sighing.

(She’s right. They really wouldn’t.)

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!


End file.
